Joaquin Benoit is one of three free-agent closers who might interest the Tigers. / Associated Press

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Detroit Free Press Sports Writer

For the fourth time in five years, the Detroit Tigers might lose their first-round pick in the amateur draft because they signed a free agent.

This year, they won’t receive a draft pick as compensation for any free agent they lose. That’s because draft-pick compensation for free agents turns on a phrase you might have been hearing: qualifying offers.

Any player is eligible for free agency if he has played at least six years in the majors and his contract expires. There are 147 players in that category this year.

If a team wants draft-pick compensation for losing any of those players, it has to offer them a major league contract for next year by this afternoon. Specifically, it must make them a “qualifying offer” of $14.1 million by 5 p.m. Under baseball rules, the qualifying offer is determined by the average of the top-125 players’ salaries this past season.

The player has one week to accept the qualifying offer — in effect, a one-year contract for next year at $14.1 million. If he turns it down, he remains a free agent. But the team that signs him would have to surrender a high draft pick — in many cases its first-round pick — if it signs him.

The Tigers have three front-line players headed to free agency: closer Joaquin Benoit, second baseman Omar Infante and displaced shortstop Jhonny Peralta. None made close to $14.1 million this year. In a session with reporters at the Brad Ausmus news conference Sunday, general manager Dave Dombrowski said the Tigers wouldn’t make a qualifying offer to anyone.

He also said the Tigers would shop the free-agent market — including Benoit — for a veteran closer. Several are available. The top closers on the market will be Texas’ Joe Nathan and Tampa Bay’s Fernando Rodney, and it appears neither will receive a qualifying offer. So the Tigers wouldn’t have to give up a draft pick to sign either.

In 2010-12, the Tigers lost their first-round draft pick as compensation for signing a free agent: in 2010 for signing Jose Valverde from Houston, in 2011 for signing Victor Martinez from Boston and in 2012 for signing Prince Fielder from Milwaukee.